Random Character of the Day

[Jim]

45 minutes ago, roddy said:

See also 开裆裤。

See too much!

[Tomsima]

1 hour ago, roddy said:

See also 开裆裤。

haha its always the key vocab that evades you!

[Tomsima]

腮

 

Spoiler

sai1, another common character that Ive managed to overlook until today perhaps? came up in conversation when talking about a cat that was eating away happily, the cats cheeks were referred to as 腮; when i asked what it meant, I was told it was the same as 臉頰. Anybody willing to clarify if they are synonymous, or if there is a preference for using 腮 to describe animal cheeks as opposed to human cheeks?

 

edit: just realised this is the character in 腮幫子 (although still not sure if this word counts as 方言 or 普通話？）

 

edit 2: 發腮 was the word about the cat, appears to mean when a (male) cats face gets all fat in the face from hormonal changes in their first year, apparently 'very cute'

[Shelley]

Apparently called "stud jowls" and are not present in neutered toms. Personally I don't find them cute, and I am a cat person.

 

I wonder if the difference is jowls vs cheek?

[Tomsima]

薨

hong1, to die (of nobility, usually used for male heirs to the throne passing away). Not a new character for me, but it just came up again in another 宮鬥 and I thought I'd share it here. I just think it looks interesting, almost like a cross between 夢 and 死 (although don't know if there is any etymological truth in that)

[Weyland]

13 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

薨

Could you maybe make certain characters larger? It's otherwise really difficult to distinguish its parts.

[Tomsima]

On 12/11/2019 at 4:15 PM, Weyland said:

Could you maybe make certain characters larger?

Of course, I usually do for this reason, but I was on mobile at the time, bit awkward

[Phil Tsien]

On 12/12/2019 at 12:00 AM, Tomsima said:

I just think it looks interesting, almost like a cross between 夢 and 死 (although don't know if there is any etymological truth in that)

You are partly right.  死 is the meaning of this character and the rest indicates the sound of this character in Ancient Chinese (both character sounds like *hmeungs) but this is not a cross between the two characters.  They are simply combined like A+B=AB. 

[murrayjames]

垛

 

垛 duò

1. 把分散的东西堆积起来 (to pile up)
2. 庄稼、砖瓦等堆积成的堆 (pile)

 

Quote

然后我们就拉着三个稻草垛回去。

 

I came across this character in the novella 《地久天长》 by 王小波.

[Tomsima]

魘

yǎn, a nightmare, or sleep paralysis. Fascinating to see the cultural parallels in this character - pressure + ghost, just like the description I've read of sleep paralysis, which is apparently like having some sort of monster sitting on top of you...no experience of it myself, but sounds pretty terrifying. The character turned up in the word 夢魘, which is the compound word for the same meaning. 夢魘 was used by a 妃子 in 如懿传 (not recommended, pretty bad directing) to describe a nightmare she had of a recently deceased relative, so vivid that she believed it to be real.

[Lu]

I moved the posts on the etymology of this character to a dedicated new thread here.

[Tomsima]

鑾

luán, the imperial carriage. Used as a euphemism for the emperor/imperial things, particularly when out of the palace. Turns up pretty regularly in 回鑾 'return to the palace', then I saw it recently in '金鑾' (as in 金鑾殿, the throne room in the imperial palace) in a piece of calligraphy by 文徵明 (元旦朝賀詩)

[Jim]

靸 sǎ - one meaning is a type of straw slipper, but what I liked was the dialect verbal sense: 方言，把布鞋后帮踩在脚后跟下. So that's a special verb for wearing your cloth shoes with the heels crushed down like slippers.

[roddy]

Ok, here's the best Chinese character ever. Thread closed:

 

狺, yin2 - the snarling of dogs

[Tomsima]

I was interested to see if 狺 was connected to 獄. Interestingly, it appears that they both have some earlier etymological connection to the character 犾, 'two dogs facing each other (off)'. The addition of 言 in both characters adds the meaning of 'barking/snarling', 狺 being one dog snarling, and 獄 being two dogs snarling at each other.  獄 goes from 'two dogs snarling at each other' to 'arguing over a case' to 'passing judgement on a crime'.

 

狺 also appears to be a variant of the character 㹞, which in addition to having the same meaning of 'snarling', can also be used as a varient written form of 齗 (later written 齦) 'gums', also pronounced yin2, which I would imagine carries the meaning of 'baring gums/teeth'. 

 

 

[Tomsima]

翕 xī - furl, as in 'furled wings', this character is used for things that slowly withdraw and close, seemingly ready to reopen at some point. Enjoyed learning this, as the character is the combination of 合 close + 羽 wings. The character turned up in the phrase 鼻翼翕张 nostrils opening and closing when breathing. As always, Kroll's descriptive definitions are worth a look: "contract...in pursed together manner; also in thorough or consistent manner"

[Tomsima]

顳 nie4 'temple(s)' as in those on your head, turned up in the word 顳骨 'temporal bone'. Aside from having never come across this character before (as I'm sure is true of many anatomy-specific characters) I liked how it manages to be an incredibly-complicated looking character, yet very easy to remember how to write.

[Jim]

戗 https://www.zdic.net/hans/戗 - saw it in the fourth tone sense, someone staggered back in a faint and was caught and held up.

[imron]

Noticed this one show up in the candidate window of my Chinese IME and thought it's almost in the same class as 囧

 

尐  

 

Pronounced jié and means 小 and/or 少.

[Michaelyus]

On 4/15/2020 at 5:01 AM, imron said:

Noticed this one show up in the candidate window of my Chinese IME and thought it's almost in the same class as 囧

 

尐  

 

I've seen this used as the character for Cantonese di1, not too dissimilar to Mandarin 些, and more commonly written as 啲 or even with Roman "D".